Earlier this week, I ran a Twitter poll on comment replies and invited discussion on it. The objective was to find out whether people expect replies to their comments on fics, whether it influences their engagement or opinion with the fic/author, and how/why.
As you can see, I received 154 votes and the results were overwhelmingly in favour of nice, but not necessary…
…but the variety of elaborations really surprised me, and it was very interesting to sift through replies. Here are some of the key points. All quotes are pretty much directly from what people sent me in response to the poll.
1. The bottom line is: most people, as commenters, do not expect comment replies.
Even if they say yeah, it’s nice. They don’t expect it.
This was usually for one of two reasons, the first being that authors are simply not obliged to reply (or to do anything, really).
It’s definitely a no from me. I don’t consider the OP has to take all that time to reply when they already gave us the fic in the first place.
Since authors have their own lives, I wouldn’t know what they’re feeling etc. Getting a reply to a comment is a nice surprise imo.
The author has already done their part in writing and sharing and they don’t owe you anything for enjoying their work. If they want to step away after that then so be it.
In general, I try to comment on everything I read and I never expect a reply, but it’s very true that as a writer I will try to reply to every comment. When it comes to Tumblr, if I don’t reply to your comment, it means Tumblr probably didn’t show it to me, or I missed it completely and I’m sorry.
Same, I try to reply to every comment.
Same here. One of the best things about AO3 is that it makes it SO easy to reply to comments – I wish FFN reviews were so easy (or so visible!) to respond to. Tumblr is harder because I miss reblogs when I’m at work, and the “reply” function is only so-so at best, anyway. But I still try to reply to everything someone takes the time to send me, be it comments, reviews, or tumblr replies/reblogs, because I always feel honored that folks took the time out to comment/review/post about my fic.
This ^^ that’s why I reply to all comments I get. I’m grateful that people took the time to read my work and drop me a note about it.
I also comment on everything I read to support other authors. I like comments on my work so I pay it forward.
